arcane spec questionFollow

I dusted off my old mage, and I decided to try out arcane. I was wondering, should I load up on haste to make arcane missiles fire quicker, or is crit and +damage a better way to go, or even a more balanced crit/haste/damage setting?
Thanks for the input.

Well, as a PvP arcane purist, I tend to do sp > crit > haste. Haste isnt that important, nothing is long anyways, as if you specced prooerly you'll have a buff which will allow you to cast arcane missiles extremely fast. The only spell which needs haste really would be for arcane blast. But it really isnt that bad if you position yourself well. Arcane blast will maximize your crit rate if you get buff up often. Even with 100+ haste, I dont think it will make a major difference for arcane, crit is better in my opinion.

Haste effects just about all spells for Mages one way or another - unless the total cooldown is already at 1 second.

Where you could say you save more time when casting a "long" spell by having more crit, the fact is it's a %. So 1x10 second cast = 2x5 second casts = 5x2 second casts - in the end the haste is saving the same amount of time especially if your not wasting time between cast.

The BIG problem with haste is that its, by its very principal, immediately effected by diminishing returns:



10% haste -> 10 second cast is now 9.09 seconds -> 90% Duration
20% haste -> 10 second cast is now 8.33 seconds -> 83% Duration
50% haste -> 10 second cast is now 6.66 seconds -> 66% Duration
100% haste -> 10 second cast is now 5.00 seconds -> 50% Duration

This formula intentionally gives scaling returns on Haste so that no hard cap is needed - You can only reach closer and closer to 0 but never achieve it. This means that, for ANY type of Mage, focusing too much on haste can result in a loss of DPS, especially when considered against Spell Power. When looking at haste%, one should not consider the time it "takes off the spell" but consider it a VERY easy stat to comprehend: Haste% can be viewed as a direct DPS% Increase by a 1:1 ratio over an extended period of time when not considering DoT effects.

The drawbacks of haste are simple - you burn through mana faster and it requires more precision to maximize the full effect of haste. Spell Power and Crit are very capable of adding immense damage without burdening your character with a higher mana cost.

The real answer here is to find a happy medium - because they all stack!!